EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Bronzino’s Mirror

I just discovered a self-portrait of Bronzino that I did not know. According to the catalogue for the current exhibition in Florence and earlier scholars too, Bronzino depicted himself in a religious painting as the poet-king David (above right).¹ Given that there are no independent self-portraits by him, it gave me a self-image with which to compare his portraits, an exercise you too should go through before mistaking portraits for photographs. The first I tried was Bronzino's portrait of the mercenary soldier Stefano IV Colonna (above left). As you should see easily, their faces are a near-match. They could be brothers. Yet even though both pictures hang today in the same exhibition, few viewers except artists are ever likely to have seen what you just have: the similarity.

Portraits by poetic artists, such as Bronzino, are always personifications of their own mind or, at least, aspects of it. In this case Colonna’s military prowess conveys the strength, fortitude and command required of a great master while the civilian cap perhaps signals Bronzino’s literary and poetic turn-of-mind. Colonna, a soldier, was also a member of the Accademia Fiorentina as Bronzino was too.² 

I should add that the face in a recently discovered preparatory drawing for this portrait looks much the same except that the nose has been lengthened, its sides and nostrils flattened, the beard considerably lengthened.³ These fairly obvious changes should not happen if the artist accurately recorded the sitter's features. My own bet is that while both drawing and portrait had some resemblance to Colonna, neither are "good" likenesses of him.

1. Liala Morini in Bronzino: Artist and Poet at the Court of the Medici (Florence: Palazzo Strozzi) 2010, p. 304

2. For a summary of Colonna’s life, see Philippe Costamagna in ibid., p. 266

3. Illustrated in ibid., p. 266